this fire in your heart
by Floodtail- AKA Floody
Summary: you give me those new feelings and they burn, yeah, they do; laura/carmilla;


The first time Laura says it, Carmilla is sure it's just the alcohol talking.

They're at Kirsch's Midterm Bash— Carmilla strictly has refused to go, but Laura didn't want to disappoint the Zeta and so the vampire had been forced to go along to protect her. And while the lackwit of a junior had promised complete safety, Carmilla groans when she sees the punch bowls in the centre of the dimly lit kitchen crowded with shrieking girls and disgustingly drunk guys. She can only surmise the unassuming red drink is spiked with some sort of drug or alcohol— she's been to so many parties in her lifetime where people have roofied a seemingly innocent beverage, and the last thing she wants is a tipsy Laura. She's definitely already enough of an irritant on her own.

Of course, the first thing her roommate does is follow Danny and LaF to the probable drugged punch.

Carmilla slinks away to knock back the time in the large house. She scares away a sophomore that is blatantly staring at her chest before finding a dark, vacant seat where she can keep an eye on Laura in the kitchen.

The party has cleared up some by now, but she can see past a cluster of teenager with smoke curling off their hoods to where Laura is clearly drunk at the counter.

There are a few empty cups of knocked back punch beside her trembling hands, and Carmilla is swearing like a sailor when she realizes the tall ginger and LaF aren't there. She doesn't want to incur the burden of having the Summer Society nut yell at her, so despite her amusement at the loud and oblivious cupcake, she swiftly crosses the lurching room and takes Laura by the arm, tugging her outside to the chilly, brisk night. The stars are bright ahead, sprinkled like diamonds across an unbroken black sky with the moon blurring the darkness. Laura's mumbling incoherent sentences, but she follows willingly as they stop under an outspread oak tree and sit on an old stone bench. Leaves crunch under her boots as she glares at her roommate.

"What the frilly hell were you thinking, getting drunk?" Anger flares within her as she looks at Laura, her honey hair loosely tied over bare shoulders and her chocolate eyes glazed as she struggles to focus on the vampire. Her hands are hot against Carmilla's thinly clothed leg.

"LaFountaine said I had to 'live a little'," Laura slurs, her hands flopping in a poor spectrum of quotes, blinking as she attempts to surface from the haze of the alcohol. "I didn't know that the punch was spiked." She's clearly inebriated, her breath bitter, sour, eyes rapidly blinking.

Carmilla grumbles under her breath, shaking her head. "You're an idiot. A tipsy one at that. How am I supposed to get you back to the dorm, hm, much less put up with you the whole damn night? You probably get pretty wild drunk."

"Yeah," Laura giggles brokenly before hiccuping twice.

"Oh, is that so." Her voice is smooth and the night breathes a cold breath of air that sweeps across the silent yard, sharply contrasted to the interior of the house footsteps away. "What are you going to try and do, cupcake, strip for me?"

She's teasing, but she can see the briefest flicker of lucidity cross Laura's foggy gaze, followed by a warmth that smolders like embers in their depths as she blinks at Carmilla.

Like coals— ones that spark a deep flame within the vampire as she clenches her jaw as they silently stare at each other.

She cannot quench this light.

"Let's… go back," she yawns, not answering the question. And the alcohol is finally out of her bloodstream, taking form in drowsiness as she lolls her head against Carmilla's shoulder, eyes fluttered shut.

Carmilla gently lifts her up, and the smaller girl wraps her legs around Carmilla's waist, burying her head in the crook of the vampire's neck. Her breath is warm and soft as it flits across her pulse point and her arms are secure as they hook around her shoulder blades.

She tries to ignore the stirring in her gut as Laura's legs shift against her torso, lips pressed to her neck, sparking fire along cold skin as she breathes evenly.

They make it back to the dorm without incident, excepting the fact where Laura is stupidly saying drunken, incoherent sentences that the vampire can't be bothered to decipher. She slowly disentangles her roommate's legs from her waist and sets her on the bed, softly pulling up the covers around her.

"Mm," Laura hums, eyes shut as she rolls over in the bed, sheets rumpling around her. "Love you," she murmurs, slurred and hardly eligible, and then she's out.

Carmilla considers waking her to ask her what the bloody hell that simple _love you _means, but in the end she decides against it.

And she really hates how those two little words keep her up all night, pondering, her hands sunk into the yellow pillow as she stares—watches— wonders— at Laura.

/ / /

The second time Laura says it, Carmilla knows she wasn't meant to understand.

She's lounging on her leopard print bed, one hand idly flipping through the Sumerian tome as she eyes Laura, cursing herself as she keeps getting distracted by minute details. The complexities and magic aura surrounding the whole hostage situation with her Mother has proved to be more dire than they've originally thought, and her fingertips lightly graze the bloodstained tome scrawled with black calligraphy.

The rune of _LaFilPhormes _sparks under her nails and she heaves a breath that weighs heavily, pressing down on her ribs as she shuts the brown, leather scratched book, papers whispering together as she casts an uninterested eye to the glowing screen of Hollis's laptop.

"Still working on this whole Lois Lane junior gig, are you?" She murmurs, shifting so the sheets tangle around her icy bare toes.

Laura's tapping furiously on the keyboard, her fingers flying across black stenciled keys before she finally halts to reply. "Yeah."

"Cupcake, you know it's doomed."

"Doesn't mean I won't try anyway," she says grimly, clicking the keypad before spinning the chair to face Carmilla.

And maybe the vampire is just imagining it— maybe she is over-analyzling it— maybe she's just foolishly wishing. But she swears she sees it in Laura's eyes, flitting through brown depths like minnows in a sunlit pond, but that same thing she saw nights ago.

It was a brief flash of lucidity in a moment of haze, those two little words—

_Love you. _

She had sworn in that coffin under the earth, known it to be true, that her love would only destroy: could only ever raze, burn, wreck anything. That black hell where bombs had rent her emaciated form and thrown her from the very fathoms of the earth, where she'd been tormented by memories of Elle—

She doesn't want to mar Laura or her light.

So she wrings her hands together— regret is pouring through her veins like lightning— and looks away and pretends not to see the smoldering warmth like buried coals in Laura's gaze.

/ / /

The third time Laura says it, she's in a rage and Carmilla thinks it's incredible that her awkward crush shows even in fury.

"You _still _haven't cleaned your hair out of the shower drain!"

Carmilla rolls her eyes before perking an eyebrow at Laura. "I'm a vampire, cutie, not a cleaning maid."

"Perry yelled at me for how dirty this dorm is, and half of it isn't even my mess!" she retorts feebly, eyes flickering with heat as she gestures wildly.

"Tell that to the ant colony under your bed," she says, unruffled, stretching her legs out as she rumples Laura's yellow pillow.

"Okay, that was _only _because LaFountaine dropped a cookie underneath the headboard," she argues, "and— wait. Are we really fighting over this?"

"You started it, creampuff," she drawls lazily.

"Ugh!" Laura makes an infuriated noise. "You are— I swear—"

"Irresistable."

Laura rolls her eyes and leaves and Carmilla is left smirking at the obvious tension in her posture and the undeniable warmth in her eyes.

/ / /

The fourth time, it's her and them and she thinks, maybe just maybe, they'll be okay—

Her roommate has forced her to watch an sickeningly torturous marathon of Vampire Diaries and she is cringing at every faux statement and the cliche of the whole act.

"This is almost as bad as that sparkling twerp," she grumbles, casting a contemptuous look at Laura over the bowl of cardboard-tasting popcorn drenched in butter.

"Edward Cullen isn't _that _bad!" Laura says defensively. She's looking over and her freshly washed honey hair is spilling over narrow shoulders like sunshine and her eyes are thick like chocolate. Fitting, the vampire thinks— she's too saccharine for her own good.

And Carmilla has always had a sweet tooth.

"Yeah he is," she argues. "He makes vampires seem like spineless numbskulls that cry at every misfortune."

Laura rolls her eyes and her face flickers with the blue rippling light that emits from the laptop, "You're just jealous."

"Of what?" she says in disbelief.

"That I like him better than you," she says proudly, tilting her chin up at the vampire as she snorts a little.

"We both know that is a lie, creampuff. My charm is irresistible." She quirks up the corner of her mouth in a crooked half smile. ""It might be a decent explanation for why you pine over me and have those hopeless fantasies while you lie awake in the small hours of the morning."

"W-what— I do not _pine over you_!" she sputters, jaw dropping.

"Surely not."

Laura flushes a bright red, cheeks burning a color that would put even the ripest tomato to shame as she shifts her arms in the sheets. "Not my fault," she murmurs and her voice is low and rasping and God Carmilla can't even think of anything but how incredibly attractive she is right now.

Next thing she knows, she's furiously kissing her, hands wrapped around her waist as Laura makes a surprised sound that is quickly killed on her lips.

When she breaks away, Laura mutters— albeit softly— "I still like Edward better."

"You're a dork," she murmurs, and any protest Laura makes is lost as she kisses her again.

/ / /

They don't need to say it again; they both already know.


End file.
